BOLTING BEES
The mysterious disappearances of the Honeybees are putting America ’ s Agriculture at stake . Will this nationwide evacuation be stopped ? By : Emily Tran
The sun shines brightly in midday , and a busy ,
buzzing beehive works restlessly at its production of honey . A group of adult honey bees set out to forage . The sunsets and the bees have not come back yet . Night falls and the bees are gone for sure . As days pass by more and more honey bees set out to forage but never come back . Weeks pass by and only the queen is left at the hive with thousands of brood to take care of . Overwhelmed , the Queen takes one last look at the lonely hive , still filled with honey , and flies off .
These kind of situations are not uncommon in the U . S . In fact , it is happening right now , at a rate which threatens the crop production of America .
What ’ s buzzing All over the United States , honey bees are abandoning their hives in great numbers ,
Honey Bee History
Scientists try to find ways to keep bees at a population to last forever
This isn ’ t the only time honey bees have died off in great numbers . There were great die-offs as early as 950 A . D in Ireland . It was called , “ The great Morality of Bees ”. It repeated in Ireland in 992 and 1443 . And then , the Great Die-Off crossed the pond in 1903 when 2,000 bee colonies died in the Cache Valley , Utah . Three years after honey bee colonies almost went extinct in the Great Die-off in the Isle of Wight , UK . And in 1996 and 2006 in Pennsylvania when bee keepers were reporting notable bee population decreases . These die-offs are still happening today , but under the new name of Colony Collapse Disorder .